Good idea: Phoenixville’s public notice page

Phoenixville Borough maintains a Legal Notices, Ordinances, and Hearings webpage that lists important information about proposed legislation. The page is a great example of transparency and open government at the local level. 

Municipalities have a lot of information to dispense — trash schedules, road closures, park events, etc. But the changes that impact residents most usually come as ordinances — which by law must be publicly advertised and discussed in a hearing before enactment. 

Some municipalities practically bury their legally required notices by keeping them very short and running them in small print publications. Others follow the spirit of transparency and make the notice and draft ordinance text available online. Phoenixville Borough’s one-stop page is perhaps the best approach — not simply providing the information in a meeting agenda or a one-off page, but creating a simple landing page that can be bookmarked and monitored.